City Manager Bill Burrough said Friday he supports relocating the statue of an unknown Confederate soldier from the privately owned Confederate Memorial Park downtown, believed to be the site of two lynchings in the early 1900s.
"I've received several emails, texts, phone calls (and) I'm aware of the petition that's out there," Burrough said. "I am aware of those efforts and I'm hoping to be able to meet with the United Daughters of the Confederacy's board and have a dialogue with them in reference to relocating the monument."
UDC representatives could not be reached for comment at presstime Friday.
He did note that even if a petition is presented to the Hot Springs Board of Directors for the removal of the monument, it sits on private property, regardless.
"I would like to see the monument moved and hopefully we'll have some success with the board of the (UDC), but it's just too early to say," Burrough said. "I will be making a strong appeal that the monument be relocated, potentially over to the cemetery where the Confederate Soldier Cemetery is in Hollywood (Cemetery)."
If the UDC doesn't agree to meet with Burrough, he said the city will look at "other options."
"I think, at this point, I want to have a meeting with their board to see if they're open to a relocation," he said. "I believe that we can find public funds in donations that would pay for the cost of the relocation. ... From the people I'm hearing from and from the outcry that I'm hearing, I don't think the (cost of relocating the monument) is going to be a factor in the decision."
Calls for the statue to be removed are not new; the most recent came in the summer of 2017, when there were pro-Confederate monument protests on Arlington Lawn. Efforts to remove the monument were reignited upon the death of George Floyd, a black man who died May 25 as a white police officer pressed his knee on his neck.
The site where Hot Springs' Confederate statue was placed, at the confluence of Central, Ouachita and Market, leans more toward the idea of it memorializing the "darker" side of history, since it is the site where the two violent lynchings occurred, according to petitioners, and not memorializing the soldiers who fought and died in the Civil War.
Guy Lancaster, who wrote "Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840-1950," discussed the lynchings in January 2019 at a meeting of the Garland County Historical Society. Lancaster said the first lynching in Hot Springs occurred on June 19, 1913, when Will Norman, a 21-year-old African American man, was hanged at the corner of Ouachita and Central avenues. The second was an African American man named Gilbert Harris, on Aug. 1, 1922, who was lynched in the same spot.
According to Liz Robbins, the historical society's executive director, "out of pure speculation," the lynching was at this site because there was a telephone pole there with clear ground around it, it was close to the Garland County Court House, and it was the only space downtown with enough room for a crowd.
Burrough said he hopes to hear over the next few days whether or not the UDC will be willing to meet with him.
The monument has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1996.
According to the Arkansas Department of Heritage, the public can request that the designation be revoked. They would have to write to the State Historic Preservation Review Board in Little Rock requesting the listing be revoked and why, an ADH affiliate said.
"I can tell you that the acts that brought this on have been deplorable," Burrough said. "I am very proud of the citizens of Hot Springs who have rallied and protested in peace. We've had very good demonstrations, peaceful demonstrations, and I want to see that continue in a peaceful manner."
Staff writer Tanner Newton contributed to this article.
Local on 06/06/2020